Publications
Articles, publications, books, tools and multimedia features from the U.S. Institute of Peace provide the latest news, analysis, research findings, practitioner guides and reports, all related to the conflict zones and issues that are at the center of the Institute’s work to prevent and reduce violent conflict.
Episode 19 - Pamela Aall
This episode features Pamela Aall, senior advisor for conflict prevention and management at USIP, senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), and founding Provost of USIP’s Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding. In this episode she addresses a wide variety of topics related to cross-cultural and multiparty negotiation, including negotiating techniques, regional cooperation in conflict management, cross-cultural communication, and women’s involvement in conflict resolution.
Amid Peace Talks, Afghan Women’s Rights Hang in the Balance
Three Afghan women journalists and a medical doctor in the eastern city of Jalalabad were shot dead last week, part of a wave of killings—perpetrated by both ISIS and the Taliban—targeting rights activists, judges and journalists. The soaring violence in Afghanistan illustrates the stakes for Afghan women and civil society as the Afghan government and Taliban negotiate in Doha and the Biden administration considers its Afghanistan policy.
Debate Lessons
What can we learn from other peace processes that could help ease the negotiations in Geneva this January between the Syrian government and the country's fractured opposition? Many seasoned practitioners would argue that since no two conflicts are alike, it is dangerous to assume that what worked in managing one conflict will work in another. At the risk of proving the skeptics right, however, there are a few areas in which earlier conflicts might provide useful lessons for Geneva: identity i...
Managing Conflict in a World Adrift
In the midst of a political shift where power is moving from central institutions to smaller, more distributed units in the international system, the approaches to and methodologies for peacemaking are changing. "Managing Conflict in a World Adrift" provides a sobering panorama of contemporary conflict, along with innovative thinking about how to respond now that new forces and dynamics are at play.
Leashing the Dogs of War
USIP released the latest volume in its ongoing series on contemporary conflict.Leashing the Dogs of War: Conflict Management in a Divided World, edited by Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall is a follow up to their landmark 2001 work Turbulent Peace, which has become a leading classroom text in the study of conflict resolution.
In a World of Syria and Ukraine, How Can Conflict Managers Adapt?
Today’s global political realities of chaos and violent conflict are well-captured by the declaration, “The center cannot hold.” It’s the title of the first chapter in a new book, Managing Conflict in A World Adrift, that dissects the shifts in international security and the tense debates about how to adapt. The trends were the subject of a recent discussion at USIP that featured co-editors Chester A. Crocker and Pamela Aall and expert authors, including an award winning marine ecologist.
Taming Intractable Conflicts
Written from the mediator's point of view, Taming Intractable Conflicts lays out the steps involved in tackling the most stubborn of conflicts. It first puts mediation in a larger context, exploring why mediators choose or decline to become involved, what happens when they get involved for the wrong reasons, and the impact of the mediator's institutional and political environment.
Grasping the Nettle
Among the unwelcome legacies of the past century are a group of conflicts, both intrastate and interstate, that seem destined never to end. Unyielding conflicts offer numerous insights—not only about the sources of intractability but also about such facets of mediation and conflict management as how to gain leverage, when to engage and disengage, how to balance competing goals, and who to enlist to play supporting roles
Herding Cats
Not only will these cases illustrate how multiparty mediation works or does not work, but they should also stimulate further work on the special requirements and best practices of the field, promote a dialogue among practitioners themselves as well as between academics and practitioners, and lead to unique insights, new understandings, and alternative approaches that can be applied to future mediations.
Rewiring Regional Security in a Fragmented World
Rewiring Regional Security in a Fragmented World examines conflict management capacities and gaps regionally and globally, and assesses whether regions—through their regional organizations or through loose coalitions of states, regional bodies, and non-official actors—are able to address an array of new and emerging security threats.